School Choice

There is a really good Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today pointing out once again how phony liberals are when it comes to school choice. The only choice they favor is one for their own children. The examples are well known to those of us whose blood boils when faced with such hypocrisy. The Clintons put Chelsea in Sidwell Friends rather than any of the public schools available to her and then vetoed a bill which would have given some inner-city parents the same option. John Edwards? He campaigns with the complaint that America has two schools-one for the affluent and one for everyone else. He sent his children to a religious school because D.C. schools are "deeply troubled". He has no problem with the logic that school choice for other kids would drain resources from public schools, but his choice didn't. Al Gore, of course, is the biggest phony on this subject as on most others. He sent his children to elite schools in the nation's capitol like the one he went to when growing up, but opposes school choice for low-income families. He once said, "If I was the parent of a child who went to an inner-city school that was failing, I might be for vouchers, too." But, as Clint Bolick, the author of this piece points out, he isn't so he doesn't.

The teachers have selfish motives for opposing choice since it would expose their failures and most of them are very liberal in opposing something which doesn't guarantee everyone an equal outcome. It is far better to keep all children in a failing school than allow some of them to escape. To a liberal, that is just as unfair as recognizing that some student might excel at soccer, or some other activity, and thereby deserve an award superior to others.

All of this is very discouraging to those who actually want a better education for our kids, but the saddest aspect of the whole situation is the parents of the inner-city kids are not perceptive and knowledgeable enough to help themselves using their political clout. Instead, they follow the same failed leadership in the largely black community.